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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23425219">Chicken Bones</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyanoka/pseuds/Nyanoka'>Nyanoka</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword &amp; Shield | Pokemon Sword &amp; Shield Versions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Age Difference, Bathing/Washing, Character Study, Established Relationship, Late Night Conversations, Literary References &amp; Allusions, M/M, Melancholy, Relationship Discussions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:03:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,709</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23425219</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyanoka/pseuds/Nyanoka</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Victor helps Piers wash his hair, and they discuss their relationship and the future.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Masaru | Victor/Nezu | Piers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Chicken Bones</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Ah...some of my favorite books are Mrs. Dalloway, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Lolita, so you can probably guess what my preferred style is. Usually I save this sort of stuff for different fandoms (ex. Fire Emblem where the "flowery" and the verbose fit more with the setting), but I wanted to have a bit of fun, and do something a bit more melancholic/contemplative and to my tastes.</p>
<p>Postwick's also a farming town according to the little blurb on the town sign, so I wanted to incorporate that more.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>From the gurgle of the curved, silver neck and then from the dark mouth of the faucet came the rush of water, falling as November’s rains and softly muttering as springtide’s stream or perhaps wailing as the river in summer.</p>
<p>Swiftly rising and threatening to overflow, the waters mask the white seabed and the bare, leaning figure, caressing pale flesh as a lover would and garbing body up to the jutting collarbone.</p>
<p>And just as swiftly as the waters rose, a slender hand reaches forward and turns the handle, stilling the flow with a squeal not unlike the shriek of fowls that Victor remembers from his childhood—the whens of his mother, bronze-skinned from years of work and hands grasped around the neck of a chicken.</p>
<p>He remembers her hands, always the left upon the neck, where spine met skull, and her right grasped firmly around the weedy legs. He remembers the distinctive pop of bones separating as his mother pulled and the wild flap of wings—scattering feathers easily as dandelion seeds adrift—before the calm of silence came, ebbing and flowing and erasing as the waves often were.</p>
<p>He remembers how he, eyes intent, had watched her from his perch on the porch, how his legs had dangled off the edge—sneakered toes nearly touching the sun-warmed dirt—and how she had smiled at him, dark hand still clenched around the bird’s neck.</p>
<p>She had handed it to him afterwards, let him feel the stillness of the cooling breast—no longer stirred by perpetual heartbeat—and the loose neck with its delicate, protruding vertebrae.</p>
<p>He remembers how he had done the same years later, during the weeks when he stayed home and after he, sleeves rolled up to the biceps, had brought the pails in, sheep’s milk near-overflowing and slushing slightly over the metal rims with each step. He remembers the beating heart—audible from underneath his palms and fingertips—and the chirping of birds and the whispers of wind singing, dancing in splendor alongside the wild grass and waving, yellow wheat.</p>
<p>Underneath the balmy late afternoon sun, he had done the same—right hand clenched tightly around the legs and left upon the knot where skull met vertebra. Tilting the head back, he had pulled, severing the connection between thought and flesh and bone. In his hands, the bird had convulsed, muscles twitching in finality before eventually stilling; natural quiet returning.</p>
<p>It is a simple existence, one inherently different from the noise of travel that he has grown used to: days spent roaming among the towering trees—upon the howling sands and the restless fields—and nights beneath the flickering glimmer of planted stars and time spent in the bustle of the city life, lights abound and mechanical chatter screaming.</p>
<p>Tonight, however, the world is different, distinct from both the idyllic and the strident.</p>
<p>His legs—from the tip of his toes to the jutting bones of his ankles and just to underneath his knees—dangle over the edge of the tub, pads of his feet presses against the submerged white. Smooth porcelain, not worn wood, pushes against the back of his calves and his covered thighs, pant legs rolled up pass the joints. A warm body leans against the front of his knees.</p>
<p>Tonight, his fingertips press against the back of a pale, breathing neck, not to wring but to gather the loose locks of hair, fine threads of black and white akin to the threads his mother uses to sew.</p>
<p>Left hand curled loosely around the hair, Victor reaches to his side, grabs the shower pail by the handle, and dips it into the tepid water before lifting, droplets dripping and plinking back into the clear depths.</p>
<p>Gently, he tips the pail over Piers’s head, wetting the hair, before repeating the motion twice more. Outside of the almost-rhythmic fall of droplets—miniature comets landing upon an enclosed ocean—and the hush of breath, there is no noise, only the rise and fall of the pail and its contents.</p>
<p>Loosening his grip on Piers’s hair and setting the pail down beside him, Victor breaks the silence first.</p>
<p>“Do you think we’ll be together forever?” Childish, pondering even perhaps in some sense of the word, but he must ask. There is no choice in the matter for him; uncertainty would be mortality, slow and prickling and so very unlike the swift separation of bone.</p>
<p>The waters shift, waves forming from the spot where Piers lifts his arm, fingers and palm rising first. It is a languid motion—reminiscent of one of those dauntless, nameless gods of old—when he rests his arm upon the white edge of the bathtub and taps his fingers idly against the porcelain, rounded ovals clicking in imitation of a siren’s descant.</p>
<p>“Havin’ second thoughts, already?” His question comes as almost a hum, a low thrum akin to what he had imagined the creatures in his mother’s old storybooks to sound like.</p>
<p>Victor shakes his head. Piers wouldn’t see it, not with their current positions, but he is someone who speaks with both the motions of the body and the melody of the tongue.</p>
<p>“No”—Victor lifts the shampoo bottle from his side and pops open the plastic cap off, the scent of lavender now pervading like fog—“I was just wondering.”</p>
<p>The shampoo is cool on his palm and as he rubs it into Piers’s hair, fingertips and nails pressing into the scalp and pushing in a circular motion. Around him and upon the waters, dark strands of hair—drifting aimlessly like plucked seaweed—intermingle with pallid starlight.</p>
<p>He isn’t particularly adept at washing longer hair, especially hair of Piers’s length—his own is short, easy to maintain and curling, brushing, against his cheeks—but still, they continue this routine, motion to motion and night to night.</p>
<p>Another hum before Piers replies, nails tapping against porcelain in some wholly intimate song.</p>
<p>“I ‘unno.” Piers winces slightly. “Don’t rub so hard, Victor.”</p>
<p>“Sorry,” he says before he gathers Piers’s hair again, lifting it up from the water. He doesn’t rub it between his hands. Instead, he carefully combs his fingers through the threads, lathering hair and evoking familiar, mundane seafoam.</p>
<p>Piers continues, “Accidents happen, you know? You grew up on a farm. You know how these things go.”</p>
<p>Victor nods, hands still working through Piers’s hair. He remembers the accidents—the sheep getting caught in the fox traps and the ones that wander into the Slumbering Weald, bodies disappearing, sinew and tendon and bone and all.</p>
<p>Life isn’t all that different really.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to promise somethin’ I might not be able to keep, and”—he pauses, voice hesitant—“we might grow apart.”</p>
<p>Another wince as Victor pulls roughly, an inadvertent motion more fit for culling than for their current intimacy, and another apology leaves Victor’s lips.</p>
<p>Silence descends then, looming as spectres often do and interrupted only by the shifting waters, the ticking of nails akin to a clock’s turning hands, and the quiet motions of life—breath and touch and connection.</p>
<p>Piers breaks it first this time, voice cutting through the hush like a decree.</p>
<p>I don’t want us to,” he says finally. “But promises—they always raise people’s expectations, make them think nothin’ can go wrong and that everythin’ will work out without effort.”</p>
<p>Victor grabs the pail again from his right and dips it into the water before pouring it over Piers’s head, banishing the foam and revealing dark hair once more.</p>
<p>“My parents were that way. Said their vows and then some and ended up divorcin’ when Marnie was five.” A light chuckle comes then, low and mirthless. “No real reason given either. They just stopped tryin’, gave up when everythin’ stopped being fun and new.”</p>
<p>He shakes his head, droplets scattering with the motion. Despite the simplicity of the motion, there’s a particular bitterness to it, akin to biting into an unripe apple.</p>
<p>The pail plunges once more before surfacing, ripples forming before quieting, and Victor tips it once more over Piers’s head—water streaming, streaking downward upon the flesh, pass the eyes and nose, and slightly pooling below on the throat and collarbone.</p>
<p>When the pail empties, Victor sets it to the side before gathering Piers’s hair in his hands, knuckles pressing gently against the nape of his neck. He would need to dry it first before the conditioner.</p>
<p>“I want to try,” Victor says. It is a simple, childish statement even to his ears, but it’s audible in the quiet of the bathroom. It isn’t certainty but simply another vow, wishful and wispy yet encompassing everything he wants to say—everything he thinks and feels and dreams.</p>
<p>There is no response, only the heartbeat humming lightly underneath his knuckles and the back of his fingers. In his hands, he feels the softness of Piers’s hair, strands light and wet yet wholly different from the feel of down and the gazing afternoon sun.</p>
<p>Victor speaks again, “I want to try—for eternity I mean.”</p>
<p>His reply comes not as a question but as a statement, and beneath Victor’s hands—fingertips upon throat—Piers’s heart thrums, hastened in some personal hymn.</p>
<p>“I can’t promise anythin’. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”</p>
<p>Victor shakes his head once more. Piers wouldn’t see it, but he would feel it in slight shake—the slight vibration—upon his neck.</p>
<p>“I don’t mind. I just want to try with you. I want to aim for tomorrow.”</p>
<p>Quietness pervades the room, and he almost feels inclined to speak again—to clarify or perhaps to ask once more—but Piers speaks before he can.</p>
<p>“Alright,” he says finally, and Victor feels a shift underneath his hands as Piers adjusts himself. “I can’t promise forever, but we can always try for that—go day-to-day.”</p>
<p>Simple and succinct yet still, the words ease his heart, quelling disquiet.</p>
<p>“Okay.” Much like before, his own response isn’t much—too simple, too childish, or perhaps too thoughtless—but he has never been all too good with words.</p>
<p>But still, despite its plainness, Piers tilts his head back—wetting Victor’s pants—and Victor leans downward, pressing his lips to his.</p>
<p>It isn’t eternity, but it is close enough.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I like to think Victor's a farmboy at his core while Hop's more "old money" tbh. I mean Hop's not in this but that's part of my reasoning for why so much focus is given to the act of homesteading. You actually can kill a chicken that way alongside the more commonly seen "broomstick" method and the knife. You just have to have a bit of strength. I'm also allowed to say "fox," "sheep," etc. because I checked the pokedex classifications and those are designations, so those words actually exist in the Pokemon world.</p>
<p>Title comes from the act of killing a chicken ofc+how much touch and life+death+eternity play in this.</p>
<p>I do like to play with allusions usually as well, and in this one, there's a bit more of a "Greek myth" and "Odyssey" vibe even if they aren't stated by name (because those don't exist in Pokemon).</p>
<p>On ages, I think I went a bit young with Piers's age voice-wise, but my answer is that I saw them as thirty-five (Piers) and twenty-four (Victor) while writing. Though, you can go younger such as with 20 and 29. I think it's up to the reader to decide with whatever they want really; I just like age differences. </p>
<p>Cut scenes: the actual act of using conditioner and more contemplation, more focus on the throat and hands, and less melancholy</p></blockquote></div></div>
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